Using valgrind - "Invalid read of size 1" for strlen - pointers

Question

I'm trying to write code that sets the name of a Student object to a new name, but I'm coming across memory leak errors when creating a character array. I assume it has to do with /0 at the end of the array and isn't terminating properly, but I don't know how to properly fix this. Thanks for the help.
#include "student.h"
#include <string>
#include <cstring>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
Student::Student(const char * const name, int perm) {
this->setName(name);
this->setPerm(perm);
}
int Student::getPerm() const {
return this->perm;
}
const char * const Student::getName() const {
return this->name;
}
void Student::setPerm(const int perm) {
this->perm = perm;
}
void Student::setName(const char * const newName) {
this->name = new char[strlen(newName)+1];
// this->name[srtlen(newName)+1] = '/0'; <---- My suggested fix, but doesn't work
strcpy(this->name,newName);
}
Student::Student(const Student &orig) {
this->setName(orig.getName());
this->setPerm(orig.getPerm());
}
Student::~Student() {
delete this->name;
this->perm = 0;
}
This is the valgrind error:
==13814== Invalid read of size 1
==13814== at 0x4C2BA12: strlen (vg_replace_strmem.c:454)
==13814== by 0x4F56FD6: UnknownInlinedFun (char_traits.h:267)
==13814== by 0x4F56FD6: std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >::basic_string(char const*, std::allocator<char> const&) (basic_string.h:456)
==13814== by 0x401ED8: Student::toString[abi:cxx11]() const (student.cpp:64)
==13814== by 0x401A46: main (testStudent00.cpp:14)
==13814== Address 0x5302e8 is not stack'd, malloc'd or (recently) free'd
==13814==

Answer 1

Your assumption that you needed to add the 0 terminator is wrong, strcpy() will do that for you. Your attempt of doing so adds the 0 terminator one byte past the space you allocated (remember, array indexes start at zero), and the syntax is also wrong, you would need to do:
this->name[strlen(newName)] = '\0';
However, to fix your memory leak You need to delete the previous string, like
void Student::setName(const char * const newName)
{
delete [] this->name;
this->name = new char[strlen(newName)+1];
strcpy(this->name,newName);
}
Student::Student(const Student &orig) :
name(0) {
this->setName(orig.getName());
this->setPerm(orig.getPerm());
}
Student::~Student() {
delete [] this->name;
this->perm = 0;
}
Now, for this to work, you also need to fix your constructor and copy constructor to initialize the name member, so it isn't an uninitialized pointer for the first call to the setName() function, and you need to add an assignment operator too, so you can properly handle assignments.
Student::Student(const char * const name, int perm) :
name(0)
{
this->setName(name);
this->setPerm(perm);
}
Student &operator=(const Student &orig) {
this->setName(orig.getName());
this->setPerm(orig.getPerm());
}
Also, consider using std::string instead of your current low level way of handling strings, that way you don't need to even implement a copy constructor, assignment operator and destructor for this class, nor deal with correctly managing memory.